Deeplinks Blog posts about Patents

When universities invent, those inventions should benefit everyone. Unfortunately, they sometimes end up in the hands of patent trolls—companies that serve no purpose but to amass patents and demand money from others. When a university sells patents to trolls, it undermines the university’s purpose as a driver of innovation. Those patents become landmines that make innovation more difficult.

A few weeks ago, we wrote about the problem of universities selling or licensing patents to trolls. We said that the only way that universities will change their patenting and technology transfer policies is if students, professors, and other members of the university community start demanding it.

Another month, another terrible patent being asserted in the Eastern District of Texas. Solocron Education LLC, a company whose entire “education” business is filing lawsuits, owns U.S. Patent No. 6,263,439, titled “Verification system for non-traditional learning operations.” What kind of “verification system” does Solocron claim to have invented? Passwords.

We’ve written many times about the need for comprehensive patent reform to stop innovation-killing trolls. While we continue to push for reform in Congress, there are a number of steps that companies and inventors can take to keep from contributing to the patent troll problem. These steps include pledges and defensive patent licenses. In recent years, companies like Twitter and Tesla have promised not to use their patents offensively.

When Universities Sell Patents to Trolls, Publicly Funded Research Is Compromised

There’s been a lot of talk lately about the state of publicly funded research. Many, including EFF, have long called on Congress to pass a law requiring that publicly funded research be made available to the public.

How do you store your paper files? Perhaps you leave them scattered on your desk or piled on the floor. If you’re more organized, you might keep them in a cabinet. This month’s stupid patent, US Patent No. 6,690,400 (the ’400 patent), claims the idea of using “virtual cabinets” to graphically represent data storage and organization. While this is bad, the worse news is that the patent’s owner is suing just about anyone who runs a website.